


the last touchdown

by calciseptine



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, American Football, M/M, Pining, Slow Build, Tony Stark Has Issues, Translation Available
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-24
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2017-11-05 22:39:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calciseptine/pseuds/calciseptine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Tony Stark wants is to finish his robot. What he gets is an embarrassing and adolescent crush on the quarterback, Steve Rogers.</p><p> </p><p>Alternately, that story in which Tony can't take care of himself and everyone knows it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. in which rhodey plies tony with breadsticks

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired [ironfries](http://ironfries.tumblr.com/post/23305846292/i-want-quarterbackartstudent-steve-giving) saying something about awkward!Tony in glasses and Steve as an art student/quarterback. Then she [doodled a bit](http://ironfries.tumblr.com/post/23528943075/nerdyawkwardglasses-tony-and-jockartstudent-steve) and things got massively out of hand.
> 
> I am sorry ahead of time.
> 
>  
> 
>  **TRANSLATION:** I wanted anyone who is a native Chinese speaker to be aware that this fic is being translated by the wonderful [ch89033](http://ch890333.tumblr.com/)! The first chapter can be read [here on tumblr](http://ch890333.tumblr.com/post/28844593819/the-last-touchdown-ch1) or [here on mtslash.com](www.mtslash.com/viewthread.php?tid=69621). (mtslash.com does require registeration.) Happy reading! ♥

"So," Rhodey says lightly as he and Tony settle into the bleachers. It's early November and the cold of the metal bench easily seeps through the denim of Tony's jeans, but Tony ignores it. His gaze flickers over the bundled-up pep band and the shivering dance team, before skipping across the browning football field. "What are we doing here?"

"Rhodey!" Tony gasps, exaggerated, as his eyes return to his friend. The team isn't on the field yet anyway. "Where's your school spirit?"

"I have school spirit," Rhodey replies. "Secretary of student council, remember? That crazy thing Pepper is president of?"

"Yeah, I'm sure Pepper injects said spirit directly into your bloodstream," Tony quips. He's not trying to change the subject; it's just that tangents and sarcasm happen when Tony opens his mouth. "Besides, you like football. There's nothing more American than football, and you're as American as American can be. You don't want to be unpatriotic, do you?"

" _Tony,_ " Rhodey huffs. The exasperation on his face is familiar. "How long have I known you?"

Tony thinks and vaguely remembers the kid who sat next to him in his first grade class and let him steal his crayons. Even back then Rhodey had an infinite supply of patience; all the other kids Tony stole crayons from tattled on him or pinched him until he gave them back, while Rhodey simply let Tony have his way until Tony lost interest. Not much has changed about their friendship dynamic, to be honest.

"Sixteen years, Tony," Rhodey answers for him. "You can't exactly pull the Stark Diversionary Tactic on me and expect it to work."

"That maneuver is flawless."

"I still want to know why you dragged me to a football game," Rhodey continues, "and don't give me that any bullshit about school spirit. You and I both know you're the antithesis of pep rallies and homecoming dances. You've been here for four years and I know for a fact that this is the first football game you've ever been to."

Tony shrugs but his heavy coat swallows the movement. "Do I need a reason?" he asks as his eyes wander back to field. The opposing team is walking onto the grass, their uniforms dark gray and vibrant yellow. A group of students—drunken and shirtless freshmen smeared with blue paint, one of them sporting a giant 'C' on his chest—near Tony boo loudly.

"With you," Rhodey sighs in resignation, "there is always a reason."

Whatever Tony wants to say to that is drowned out by the rise of music as the pep band starts up with the university's anthem. The dance team tumbles into action, their blue and white pom-poms glittering in the stadium lights, and the spectators in the crowded arena rise to their feet and roar, a din that triples as the football team pours onto the grass. Tony plants a hand on Rhodey's firm shoulder as he gets up; he has to stand on his seat in order to get a clear view of the field below.

"Tony?" Rhodey yells over the noise. He stands as well and looks in the same direction as Tony. "Tony, what are you—"

They see the bold **ROGERS 17** at the same time. Tony can't hold back the dumb, soppy smile that blooms on his face when the football player raises one of his burly arms and waves at the crowd. Rhodey groans at Tony's reaction; Rhodey would not have been able to hold his despair back even if he wanted to.

"I take back everything I said," Rhodey grouses as he flops back onto the bleachers and covers his eyes with a tired hand. "You do have school spirit. Why? Because last time I checked, falling for the quarterback is _definitely_ a prerequisite."

.

The game lasts for a little less than three hours and their team, the Captains, wins by a narrow margin. The rookie quarterback, Steve Rogers, scores a touchdown in the last five minutes that pulls the Captains ahead by a mere point. When he races down the field, his longs legs devouring yard after yard, Tony gets to his feet again and yells encouraging nonsense at him, "Go, Steve, go!" and "You can do it!" as though Steve can hear him over the cacophony of the crowd.

"It's like you've been bodysnatched," Rhodey says when Tony plops back down. His tone is as amused as it is horrified. "I don't know this person in front of me. Who are you, and what have you done with Tony?"

"Har har har, don't quit your day job," Tony snarks, but the bite of his words is lost due to the giant grin splitting his face and the red of exertion on his cheeks. "Also, who wouldn't want to snatch this body?"

"Your narcissism shouldn't reassure me as much as it does."

Afterwards, Rhodey drags Tony away from the stadium—"Tony, the team is probably getting cleaned up right now and, _Tony, get back here, I know what you're thinking!_ "—and to Pepino's, a small and independent pizzeria just off campus. Tony's stomach growls when they walk in and he smells the garlic breadsticks. He hasn't eaten anything since yesterday morning, when Pepper shoved a jumbo blueberry muffin into his hand instead of his usual coffee. His stomach lining had thanked her; his exhaustion had not.

"I know I'm going to regret this," Rhodey says after Tony wrangles them a small table by the window. It's crowded inside, as it usually is around dinnertime on a Saturday, but the football game has doubled the normal crowd. "But I am seized by a terrible and masochistic curiosity."

"I distinctly remember you giving up on my love life in the tenth grade when I dated the Japanese foreign exchange student. Rumiko? Do you remember how she used to—"

"Don't get me wrong, I am still one-hundred percent given up," Rhodey assures quickly. "It's just… the star quarterback? You put blue dye in our high school football teams helmets when we were juniors."

"Those dumb jock assholes totally deserved it, Rhodey! They got the funding the Mechanics Club needed to stay on as an extracurricular!"

"I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: one person does not constitute a club, Tony."

Rhodey manages to redirect the conversation from old high school grudges and back to Steve by the time their pizza—thin crust double supreme—and a basket of handmade breadsticks arrive. "If you at least tell me how me how you met," Rhodey bargains as Tony heaps a huge, hot slice onto his plate, "then I'll buy dinner."

"And the first round," Tony tacks on.

"And the first round," Rhodey concedes.

Picking up his food, Tony takes a huge bite and pretends to contemplate the offer as he slowly chews. Then he shrugs. "Deal."

.

Tony has been staring at the schematics for his robot for over an hour, trying to work out an unexpected glitch, when someone touches his shoulder.

"Holy shit!" Tony does not shriek as he jumps off his chair so forcefully it clatters to the ground. His blueprints go flying, he nearly knocks his glasses off his own face, and the expensive drafting pencil that was in his hand is now lost in the pit of blankets, pillows, and discarded clothing that is his roommate's bed. Tony spins around, yelling, "Warn a guy, will you—"

—when his nose bumps against someone's chest.

Someone's very warm, very naked chest.

"I'm sorry!" apologizes the someone attached to the chest earnestly. "I kept trying to get your attention, but you were glaring at your project and didn't hear me, and the door was open and I was just walked in and—umm, excuse me? Are you listening to me?"

"Yeah," Tony tells the pectoral muscles in his line of vision. He has to adjust his glasses for a better, more focused view. "You are the most beautiful girl at the ball. Would you like to dance?"

"Okay," someone says and suddenly a hand comes between the chest and Tony's appreciative eyes. "Are you—are you _high?_ "

"Not unless your chest is a mind altering substance," Tony replies, his brain-to-mouth filter officially incapacitated. He tries in vain to peek around the broad palm and thick fingers obscuring his view, blabbering, "Which it might as well be, considering. Do you wax? Were you sculpted this way by a very benevolent god? Or—oh, did I forget is was my birthday again? Are you one of those stripper grams? Pepper sent you, didn't—no, wait, my birthday is in March."

"Stripper gram? What are you—look, I don't care if you're high, I just—are you Thor?"

Tony finally peeks up at the face the Divine Pectorals are associated with, only to find that he quite likes the face as well. He's always had a thing for blond hair and blue eyes; in combination with the straight eyebrows, full mouth, and strong jaw covered in day old stubble, Tony suspects that the universe has just thrown a vaguely confused Tommy Hilfiger model up in his dorm room.

"That depends," Tony responds gamely, "on why you need him."

"Laundry," the Tommy Hilfiger model answers somewhat indecisively, the last syllable rising in pitch as though he were still asking a question. Traces of confusion linger in the downward curl of his mouth and the furrow of his eyebrows.

"As in do your laundry?" Irrationally, Tony thinks of Thor—Thor, his bearded, bear of a roommate—doing someone's laundry in a skimpy French maid outfit, and shudders. Thor is a very good-looking person, but living with someone for over three years is more than enough time to kill any latent sexual attraction, especially if that other person is Thor. "Uh, did he lose a bet or something, because the Thor I know doesn't believe in clothes. He especially doesn't believe in clothes on Thursdays."

"It's Tuesday?"

"My point exactly."

Tony and the Tommy Hilfiger model look at each other for a moment. Tony could go on looking for much longer than a moment, but the model sighs and adjusts the full laundry basket he has slung under one arm. _Where did you come from?_ Tony wonders at the hamper. Then, _Oooh, bicep._

.

"I am ashamed to know you," Rhodey interjects.

"I think you mean privileged," Tony retorts around a breadstick.

"I'm not the one with marinara on his cheek."

"Gravity doesn't work that way, Rhodey."

" _What does that even mean._ "

"Are you going to stop interrupting and let me tell you the rest of my story?"

"I don't think I could stop you at this point."

.

"I need to do my laundry," the model explains, his words clear and clipped by a light, nasal Brooklyn accent, "but the time table in the laundry room has Thor from #216 slotted for the next three hours. I checked to make sure that the washer and dryer were empty, and they were, but I wanted to be absolutely positive that I could use them. I don't want to be that guy, you know?"

"A model and a boy scout," Tony exclaims even though, no, he really doesn't know what 'that guy' is. It's Pepper's job to know that kind of stuff, anyway.

"What?"

"I wouldn't worry about it." Tony steamrolls over the model/boy scout's raised eyebrow. "Thor is out with his boyfriend right now, doing things that are still illegal in several states—bad influence, that one—and won't be back until tomorrow morning or whenever his bail is posted. And even if Thor were here, he'd probably thank you for liberating him from the tyranny of having to separate his whites and colors."

The model/boy scout hesitates as he sorts through the jumble of Tony's words—which can sometimes be no small task—before he asks, "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. Being clothed offends his Viking ancestry, or something."

"No, I'm meant—" but the model/boy scout cuts himself off mid-sentence and smiles. It's only a quirk in each corner of his pink mouth, but it makes Tony's heart kick and he suddenly feels as though he had one too many shots of espresso injected directly into his bloodstream. _Huh,_ Tony thinks, cataloging the strange jerk in his torso even as the other man continues with, "You know what, never mind. I'm just going to go do my laundry."

"Are you going to need help?" Tony asks, flirting instinctively as he shoves his hands into the front pockets of his favorite jeans. Normally it's a casual gesture, but Tony is oddly nervous and feels the strange need to hide his restless hands. The model/boy scout's lack of a shirt is probably the culprit. "I hear finding the right soap to water ratio for maximum cleanliness is particularly tricky."

The model/boy scout laughs, a light and clear sound that should be obnoxious, but isn't. The action exposes all his straight, white teeth; it makes the corners of his blue eyes crinkle with an adorable, all-American boy charm; and the last string of tension in his broad shoulders dissolves, leaving him loose-limbed and leaning incrementally forward towards Tony as he murmurs "Is that so?"

"I can solve all sorts of problems," Tony offers. His heart thumps erratically. "I have a minor in mathematics and a major in mechanical engineering; it's time I used my powers for good instead of evil."

"And I'm a visual arts major," the blond replies good-naturedly, "but last time I checked, I didn't need advanced calculus to clean a load or two of dirty socks."

A small lull in their conversation follows, in which he and Tony regard each other for a second time. Tony's mouth wants to open up and word vomit, to make the model/boy scout stay longer, but his brain manages to reign in the impulse. Pepper always tells Tony he can come off too strongly when the other person doesn't know what to expect from him; Tony is belatedly determined to act less like he needs his own warning label and more like a normal human being.

"Thanks for the offer anyway," the model/boy scout says, swiping his palm over his military short hair and flicking a wet tongue across his bottom lip. "Maybe next time—ummm—you know, I just realized that, if you're not Thor, I don't know your name."

"Tony." Tony blurts. "Uh, Tony Stark."

"I'm Steve Rogers," the model/boy scout says warmly. He extends his free arm to shake Tony's hand and Tony practically rips the pocket clean off his jeans in his haste to comply. When Steve's impossibly broad palm envelopes Tony's smaller hand, Tony wonders if it's possible to fall in love with another person's handshake. Inanely, Tony remembers that way his father always told Tony a man that was defined by his handshake. Tony had never believed the old adage—it was easy to fake a good handshake, Tony being the paragon of 'fake it till you make it'—but if the saying is true, then Tony is without a doubt screwed.

( _And not in the good way,_ Tony mentally laments.)

Tony holds onto Steve's hand a beat longer than is appropriate, trying to memorize the warmth and the width of his palm. Steve doesn't seem to notice. Then again, Steve doesn't seem to notice the way Tony's fingers linger against his skin as they pull away, or the way Tony's hand slowly curls around the negative space where Steve's hand had been, either.

"I guess I'll see you around?" Steve says.

"Yeah," Tony all but croaks. "Yeah, I guess you will."

When Steve leaves, he casts one final glance at Tony from over his enormous shoulder. Tony feels the look burn all the way down, from his throat to his toes. Then, as Steve disappears from sight, Tony falls back bonelessly into the Pit that is Thor's bed, covers his eyes with his palms, and fails to think about something other than Steve's perfect chest, his perfect smiles, and his perfect rear end.

.

"And that was two months ago?" Rhodey asks as he polishes off his first beer. They've migrated from Pepino's to the bar several blocks downtown. Neither Tony nor Rhodey particularly like said bar, but it's the only one within walking distance of the university.

"Six weeks and four days, actually, but let's not argue semantics."

"And you haven't talked to him since?"

"Unless you count the non-verbal conversations we have in my wildest fantasies and the occasional Dude Nod Of Acknowledgement, then the answer is a pathetic and resounding no." Tony finishes off his two fingers of cheap whiskey and waves at the bartender for another. When she sets it in front of him, Rhodey stops Tony from handing her his card and slaps a twenty down.

"Another for him and two more Bud Lights for me," Rhodey tells her.

"I know you're going senile in your old age," Tony says as the bartender fills another tumbler of whiskey. "But the deal was for the first round, not all of them."

"Tony," Rhodey says with immense gravity, "there are times when the only thing I can do for you is buy you a drink and silently mourn your social skills. This is the buying you a drink part. Please shut up so we can move onto the mourning."

For once, Tony does as he's told.


	2. in which loki and tony have a diva-off

When Tony wakes up on Sunday morning, the first thing he realizes is that the warbling in his ears is due to Susan Boyle's rendition of _I Dreamed a Dream_ being blared from his computer's speakers.

"Who the hell is listening to show tunes at nine in the morning?" Tony wants say, but since his face is mashed into his pillow and his mouth feels like he tried to eat a bag of jumbo-sized cotton balls, what comes out is, "Oooonggghnngggggg?"

The second thing that Tony becomes aware of is his brain, which is trying—with minimal success, though not for lack of effort—to crawl out of his skull. He moans pathetically and lifts his head from the safety of his pillow. Once this mighty feat is accomplished, he opens his bleary eyes and winces as the sunlight cuts into his retinas. It's too much too fast, so he automatically reaches for his over-sized down comforter. All he wants is to burrow underneath the heavy cover and breath hot, recycled air until he falls back asleep; sleeping until his migraine recedes has been his tried and true hangover remedy since he was first introduced to binge drinking at sixteen. When he has difficulty bringing said comforter up over his head, Tony cracks one of his bleary eyes open in order to see what the problem is.

This is when Tony notices Thing Number 3: Loki.

Thor and Tony have been roommates since freshman year. At first, both of them had their beds on the ground level, a thoughtless decision that had turned out to be a retrospective nightmare. Since the Misappropriated Mattress Debacle two years and five months ago, an incident so horrific it shall never be mentioned again, Tony has always taken the loft bed. He doesn't mind the hassle of having to climb up and down the short ladder attached to the loft's frame, nor is he bothered by the fact that his face is less than a foot away from the ceiling when he sleeps. He doesn't toss and turn like Thor and half the time he bothers to count sheep, Tony falls asleep at his desk or in the lab. Hell, he doesn't sleep as often as Thor period, who could turn catnaps into an Olympic sport.

The only problem Tony has with his and Thor's sleeping arrangement is this: to optimize the amount of space they have in their closet-sized dorm, Tony has his loft against one wall while Thor has his bed placed perpendicularly beneath Tony's. Not only does it put Tony's head right by the window—a problem he solved with heavy drapes that would put blackout curtains and lead vests to shame—but it also means that if anyone stood on Thor's bed, they would be just above eye-level with Tony.

This fact is one that Loki, Thor's worse half, has been taking advantage of since they were freshman.

"Loki," Tony greets as faux-cheerfully as possible. "Do you think it would be possible for you to release my blanket from your foul and evil clutches?"

"Your comfort is ever my concern," Loki replies snottily, "which is why the answer you seek is a loud and resounding no."

Since Tony has only been awake for a minute or so, it takes him at least five seconds to process the fact that Loki isn't going to give him his comforter back without a struggle. "Asshat!" Tony insults as he grabs twin handfuls of the crimson duvet and pulls. "My—dorm—my—rules!"

Tony and Loki fight over possession of the blanket, though the brief battle really could not be called as such. Loki has several advantages over Tony—such as being half a head taller, a dedicated practitioner of capoeira, and fully cognizant—who is generally useless before his first cup of coffee, even when he isn't completely and terribly hungover.

"Have you never heard of guest rights?" Loki sneers as he yanks the comforter off Tony's body entirely and dumps it on the floor.

"You're not a guest, you're a parasite!" Tony exclaims hotly. He rolls over onto his side and turns his back to Loki, but without a blanket, it is impossible to fall back asleep. Tony generates little body heat, and his boxers and the flimsy button down he wore the night before offer no protection from the early winter chill leaking in through the window. Tony huffs and grouchily continues, "You bat those big green eyes at Thor, trick him into letting you inside my domain, and then eat all my dried blueberries!"

" _Your_ domain?" Loki pokes Tony in the back with a particularly bony and unforgiving finger. Tony hisses and tries to wriggle away, but Loki's has a long arm and an even longer reach. "Stark, you're projecting again. The only thing distinctly yours about this tiny space is the distinct lack of hygiene."

"My hygiene?" Tony says indignantly, rolling back over so he can raise an eyebrow at the other man. "Excuse me, have you met your boyfriend? Have you not slept in his bed? No, not a bed, _a pit._ Hell, you're standing in it right now. How is that going for you?"

Loki sniffs delicately and says, "I am afraid I do not know what you are speaking of."

Tony has a retort on the tip of his tongue, but this is when his brain suddenly commandeers all of his attention. It could be that the Susan Boyle song ceases its assault upon his ears, leaving more room for thought processing, or it could be the mention of Thor, but his thoughts cycle back to the night before. He and Rhodey drank until the bars closed at two, then staggered back to campus, bellowing Lady Gaga's _Bad Romance_ and giggling (manfully!) when they couldn't remember the lyrics. As they lived in different halls, they had to part ways when they reached the campus union.

"You'll get him," Rhodey had slurred as they said their goodbyes. Rhodey had always been a touchy, emotional drunk and he pulled Tony into a tight hug. Tony, who normally bristled when people touched him for prolonged periods of time, fell into the embrace easily enough. "You're a sonuvabitch and you're crazy, but you're a good guy. Good guys always get the girls."

"But Steve isn't a girl!" Tony snickered drunkenly into Rhodey's shoulder.

"Whatever," Rhodey laughed.

Without Rhodey to lean on, it had taken Tony an eternity to get to his hall, fish out his student id to unlock the automated doors, and climb up a single flight of stairs to the second level. He had been really confused by the familiar green scarf knotted on the door handle and wracked his brain for the meaning behind it. When the search came up blank, Tony untied the scarf and threw it around his head Ninja Turtle Style. Getting his key into the lock was a painful and uncoordinated process, but he managed— _eventually_ —and threw open the door with a triumphant shout.

"Oh god," Tony moans as he recalls, in stunning and eidetic detail, the mess of naked limbs on the floor. He should really, really stop drinking. " _Oh god, my poor, poor psyche._ "

"So you do remember," Loki sneers as Tony's brain is assaulted by the hazy memories of his roommate and his Best Frenemy wrapped around each other. Tony had always known Loki was flexible—between his capoeira classes and the Wednesday morning yoga practices with Amora and Sigyn, Loki could probably put a circus contortionist to shame—but Tony had never needed the fact confirmed so vividly.

(On second thought, Tony should really, really start drinking more. As in, right now. Blackouts are his only chance of survival.)

"This is so wrong," Tony laments. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and writhes dramatically on his mattress. "You were—with Thor—do you even— _I bought that rug!_ "

"My gratitude," Loki says. Tony can't see his smug, smug face but he can imagine it.

" _And now I have to burn that rug._ "

Loki clicks his tongue and Tony hears the springs of Thor's mattress creak as Loki jumps to the floor. "You've had to burn that hideous thing a week after you bought it." Something inside Tony dies; cumulatively, he's spent _hours_ digging his toes into the plush rug. "And cease the dramatics—I sent Thor to HQ five minutes ago."

Tony's head pokes up, his unfortunate Pavlovian response whenever HQ is mentioned. Headquarters, colloquially known to the student population as HQ, is a coffeehouse just off campus. For three dollars, a person can buy a jumbo sized coffee in a cup that is the bastard cousin of a Big Gulp. Tony has been a faithful customer since Thor broke their coffee pot last September and swears up and down, backwards and forwards, that HQ's secret ingredient is cocaine.

"This doesn't mean I forgive you," Tony quips.

"I am inconsolable with grief," Loki drawls.

Getting down from the top bunk proves to be a near impossible task. Late last night—or was it very early that morning?—Thor had helped Tony clamber into his loft. ("Wash your hands!" Tony had shrieked when Thor had given up on seeing Tony struggle with the short ladder. "Wash your everything!") Loki, perched primly on the edge of Tony's desk chair, watches with an unnecessary amount of glee as Tony slowly makes his way down. Every movement makes Tony's already aching head throb and there's a vague nausea that creeps up his esophagus the longer he stays upright. He's never actually thrown up when he was hungover, but he drank the Jack Daniels River dry the night before. There is a first for everything.

By some miracle, Tony makes it to the ground without falling off the ladder. He creeps around the rug and rummages in the mini-fridge for a bottle of water. After a long swallow, he goes on a quest to find the ibuprofen. It isn't on top of the microwave like it usually is, nor is it on his desk, nor behind Thor's empty _Muscle Milk_ bottles. He gives up when he tosses Thor's heavy leather jacket from the armchair and finds nothing beneath the cushion except for an old gum foil.

"As amusing as it is to try and determine what small and pathetic animal you resemble right now," Loki interrupts, "is this what you are looking for?"

Loki waves the painkillers in Tony's direction.

"You do love me!" Tony exclaims as he reaches for the container. Loki rolls his eyes as Tony snatches it out of his hand and is momentarily bested by the childproof packaging, genius-level IQ notwithstanding. When he gets finally gets it open, he downs eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen with one swig of water. He drinks the rest in a futile attempt to erase the fuzz growing on the epithelial tissue of his mouth.

"My altruism knows no boundaries, Stark," Loki replies. His expression twists with disgust as he adds, "Except for perhaps your breath."

Tony leans forward quickly and tries to breathe on Loki, but Loki is faster. He pulls back and swipes a hand in front of Tony's face. Dressed in one of Thor's over-sized thermals and with his normally impeccable hair a mess of curls from sleeping, Loki looks ridiculous when he scrunches his face in disgust. Tony laughs loudly even though it hurts his sore body and brain.

"Okay princess," Tony chuckles. "I'll go brush my teeth."

Tony is out the door before Loki can have the final word. The fluorescent lights of the hallway are not as grating as the natural sunlight in his dorm, but Tony still squints and staggers all the way to the communal bathroom. It's only once he's a foot away from the door that he realizes he doesn't have his toothbrush.

"Dear Universe," Tony mutters under his breath, as he turns on his heel and trots back to his dorm room. "I know you're a force consisting mostly of dark matter and apathy, but do you think you could make this day go a little more—"

Caught in the middle of his tirade, this is when Tony's face is intimately reacquainted with Steve's pectorals.

"Tony!" Steve exclaims as Tony bounces off his body as easily as a rubber ball against concrete. A hot flush immediately blooms across Tony's face—inanely, he thinks about growing a beard in order to hide any future blushing that might occur—but Steve doesn't seem to notice. "Hey Tony, how are you?"

Tony looks up into Steve's eyes. It is simultaneously impossible and easy to forget how blue they are. If Tony were more of a romantic, he might say that they are as blue as the summer sky or a clear sea; however, all Tony can think about is the vibrant blue selenium turns when it is set on fire.

"Tony?" Steve says, his voice rising slightly in confusion. Tony thinks it should be against cosmic law to look so good while being concerned. "You look a little rough. Are you okay?"

Tony's brain restarts just as Steve presses the back of his hand to Tony's forehead. His skin is so warm that Tony is caught between the urge to either jerk away or lean into Steve's touch. Instead, he remains shock still and blurts, "Good! Good, I'm fine, I'm great!" far too rapidly. Steve bites his lip as he pulls away, and it takes all of Tony's willpower not to whimper at the sight of Steve's straight, white teeth sinking into the plump swell of his mouth.

"Are you sure?" Steve says and—seriously, what is his life?

Somehow, it has taken Tony this long to realize that: **a)** he's not wearing any pants, **b)** his long-sleeved cotton shirt is wrinkled beyond what can be called 'pleasantly rumpled', **c)** his breath is so rank he can _taste_ it, and **d)** by some freak miracle, Loki's scarf is still tied around his head. Self-consciousness drowns Tony in a deluge.

"Yeah, of course!" Tony begins to blabber. "Why wouldn't I be? I'm always fine, Steve, don't worry about it. But enough about me, what about you? I was at the football game yesterday, you know, it was pretty exciting in the stands, I can't imagine what it must have been like on the field! Especially when you rushed down the field and scored the winning points at the last second? That was pretty cool, don't you think? What am I saying, of course you think so, I mean how could you not—"

"You came to my game?" Steve interrupts, as though Tony isn't trying to shove his foot further and further into his mouth.

"Yeah," Tony answers, truthfully and breathlessly and stupidly. "Yeah, I did."

Steve and Tony stare at each other, and silences stretches between them. Tony wants to say something, anything, but he finds he can't form a single thought when Steve looks so patient and understanding and _good_. It's as though he believes Tony is an actual human being rather a babbling mess or an exasperating lunatic. None of Tony's mortification abates, but the tight knot in his chest does loosen incrementally.

The moment ends when someone down the hallway slams a door. Quickly, Tony drops Steve's gaze and glances to his left; to his growing embarrassment and horror, he finds that he's standing almost directly in front of his dorm. The door is propped open and Thor and Loki are ogling the pair of them, like tourists at the zoo. Loki has an obscene look of glee on his face—in complete honesty, Loki's delight terrifies Tony infinitely more than his anger—while Thor wears an intense expression, as though he were looking at a particularly convoluted math problem.

"So," Tony blurts as he inches slowly towards the safety of his dorm. "Good game! Keep up the great work, and all that jazz. But my roomie is back with coffee and I should get going so, you know, it was nice talking to you, a real slice, let's do it again sometime, goodbye!"

Tony retreats into his room and shuts the door behind him, the motion choppy and not-so-gentle in his haste. He rips Loki's scarf off his head and tosses it into The Pit, closes his eyes and slumps against the wood almost immediately, the rush of adrenaline making his legs shake.

"Tony?" Thor asks when Tony regains enough composure to open his eyes. "Did he offend you in some manner?"

It has to be the dwindling amounts of epinephrine coursing through his bloodstream or Thor's speech patterns—they have always been unnecessarily formal, as Thor's primary resource when he learned English as his second language was trashy romance novels—or a combination of the two, but Tony begins to laugh. Each inhale makes his brain rattle uncomfortably in his skull but he can't stop, because Thor just made him sound like the sassy, bonnet-wearing heroine in a Jane Austen novel.

"I think the only offense in that conversation was to flirtation," Loki says. His grin is still too wide. "I must say, Stark, that your usual charisma has devolved."

"Are you finally admitting to my natural charisma?" Tony asks, his voice a little strained as he tries to catch his breath.

"Hardly."

At this point, Thor says, "You could have invited him in. I have only brought coffee enough for three, but I also brought a dozen specialty doughnuts from Fury's. He could have partaken, especially if he is your intended."

"Thor," Tony says as seriously as he can, which is to say, not very. "Steve is not my intended."

The confusion on Thor's face increases in direct proportion to the fall of his eyebrows. "I do not understand," he slowly says. "I do not think I have ever seen you so agitated in the presence of another person. If you wish to be with him, surely sharing these treats would help your quest rather than hinder it?"

"Thor," Tony replies, "I don't want to share my deep-fried treats with Steve. At all. Literally or metaphorically."

Thor looks down at the yellow box and the stylized print atop it:

Thor's expression morphs from puzzlement to calm understanding; Thor's easy acceptance has always amazed Tony. "If you say so, my friend."

Thor does not speak as he hands Tony his huge coffee or as he opens the small box and removes one of the doughnuts for himself. Next to him, Loki picks out one of the lemon meringues. Thor hands Tony the box after and he settles on the armchair in the corner, trying to decide between the red velvet cake or the chocolate-peanut butter.

"I find myself regretting waking you at all," Loki says suddenly. Tony looks up from the doughnut box in his lap while Thor turns his attention from his bear claw to his boyfriend. "Because if I had known how complete your thirteen year old girl-angst was, I would have let you sleep in."

For once, Tony has nothing to say.

"Loki," Thor admonishes. His free hand curls around the back of Loki's head, a tender yet absent gesture. "Be kind."

In the end, Tony only takes one doughnut—the red velvet cake—curls up into the worn softness of the armchair, and nurses his huge coffee while desperately trying not to think about how right Loki actually is.


	3. interlude i: in which clint is a true bro

  
Steve is on his way to the studio when he bumps—quite literally—into Tony Stark.

Despite living on the same floor in the same dorm hall, Steve only catches brief glimpses of Tony every so often. Sometimes, they pass each other on the stairs or on campus; Steve always raises his hand in greeting, to which Tony will give him a returning nod. Still, it doesn't surprise Steve that they don't see each other more often. Tony is a senior with a focus in engineering while Steve is a first year art student, and even if their classes weren't on opposite ends of the university, Steve's free time is eaten by his numerous projects and strenuous football practices.

Steve has to constantly remind himself that he shouldn't be disappointed by that fact. He doesn't know what kind of person Tony is outside of his clever quips and erratic hand gestures and doe eyes—no matter how much he wishes otherwise—and he can't miss a person he barely knows. At least, not logically.

"Tony!" Steve says brightly as Tony bounces off his chest. Steve's hands come up to catch Tony, but the other man rights himself without help. Tony's wild, startled eyes dart upwards to Steve's face and his cheeks turn bright red. Steve almost laughs at disorientation on Tony's face; they really have to stop meeting like this. "Hey Tony, how are you?"

Instead of replying, Tony stares at him. There are huge bags under Tony's eyes and his hair is an unruly tuft of darkness; he has a green silk scarf knotted around his head; his Oxford might have been crisp if it weren't wrinkled from sleep; and his plain boxers expose an obscene amount of leg, his lean thighs tapering into hairy calves into bare, bony feet. It should be impossible, Steve thinks, to look like death warmed over and oddly adorable simultaneously, but Tony manages it.

"Tony?" Steve asks, his voice rising. He forces himself to look at Tony's face, away from the pale upper curve of his legs. "You look a little rough. Are you okay?"

And before Steve can stop himself, he places the back of his hand against Tony's forehead. It's what Steve's mother used to do when he was younger and frailer, when the common cold was his greatest enemy and his asthma so severe he had fits at the slightest provocation. Bucky likes to tell Steve he's a mother hen whenever he replicates the mindful gesture, but Steve remembers how reassuring the slightest touch felt when he was unwell. Steve will gladly offer anyone the simple comfort, even if it means Bucky will tease him endlessly about it.

That he gets to touch Tony is a mere bonus.

"Good!" Tony blurts despite the fact that his skin is cool and clammy against Steve's knuckles. He looks agitated and he fidgets, rocking on his heels. Irrationally, Steve wants Tony to lean into him, though Tony has no reason to do so. "Good, fine, I'm great!"

In spite of his skepticism, Steve pulls his hand away. Maybe Tony isn't used to being touched and Steve's proximity makes him uncomfortable; the idea that Steve is the reason Tony is so on edge leaves a sour taste in Steve's mouth. Yet when Tony sways increasingly, Steve can't help a stressed, "Are you sure?"

Tony's eyelids flutter and he drops his gaze. His eyelashes are a heavy smear of dark against his skin, like a smudge of charcoal on warm paper. Steve's twitch with the urge to replicate the softness of Tony's eyes. "Yeah, of course!” he reassures Steve. "Why wouldn’t I be? I’m always fine Steve; don’t worry about it."

If he could, Steve would say something about how Tony looks like he needs to go back to bed and sleep for a week, but Tony steamrolls over Steve's side of the conversation. "Enough about me, what about you? I was at the football game yesterday, you know, it was pretty exciting in the stands, I can’t imagine what it must have been like on the field! Especially when you rushed down the field and scored the winning points at the last second? That was pretty cool, don’t you think? What am I saying, of course you think so, I mean how could you not—”

"You came to my game?" Steve interrupts, distracted momentarily from Tony's obvious not-so-well being. He can't help it; the idea that Tony was in the bleachers yesterday, cheering for him and yelling encouragement, makes something twist helplessly inside his gut. Ruthlessly, he quashes the emotion. Tony was probably there against his will and probably spent the majority of the game playing _Angry Birds_ on his cellphone. Steve may not know much about Tony, but team sports don't seem like the kind of thing he'd be into.

"Yeah," Tony answers a beat later. He looks at Steve from under the long wings of his lashes. Without his glasses on, it's easy to see how impossibly big and warm his eyes are. "Yeah, I did."

Steve swallows and tries not to think about how gorgeous Tony is, about the slope of his shoulders, the angle of his knees, or the slant of his sly mouth. It's terribly hard to pretend that he hasn't been imagining what it would be like to kiss Tony since they first met, how Tony would have to roll onto the balls of his feet and how Steve would steady Tony by putting his hands on Tony's hips. Steve wonders what Tony would do if he closed the scant distance between them, and—

Down the hall, someone slams a door. The noise makes Tony jump and look around frantically, like a startled rabbit, and snaps Steve out of his inappropriate and rampant imagination. He notices at the same time Tony does that they're just outside Tony's dorm and that they have an audience. A broad, blond man with a thick beard and a sherpa hat glances curiously between them, while the other man, his narrow face handsome but mischievous, has a huge understanding grin on his face. Steve feels himself getting flustered; he's never been good at subtly and it most be horrifyingly obvious that he was about to kiss Tony.

"So!" Tony blurts as he inches slowly away from Steve and into his dorm room. “Good game! Keep up the great work, and all that jazz. But my roomie is back with coffee and I should get going so, you know, it was nice talking to you, a real slice, let’s do it again sometime, goodbye!”

"Tony—" Steve tries to say, but Tony has already closed the door.

Steve stands there for a minute, listening to the muffled but indistinct voices beyond. When he realizes that he's trying to eavesdrop, Steve flushes in embarrassment and retreats back to his own dorm. Predictably, his roommate, Clint, is in the same spot he was five minutes ago when Steve left.

"Hey bro," Clint greets as he slays another zombie. He glances up and frowns, then swears softly when an undead bag lady tries to eat his avatar. "I thought you were headed off to finish that painting?"

"I was," Steve says, his voice tight. The skin on his neck still feels hot and, when Clint throws him a second glance, looking at him like Bucky does, like he can tell when Steve is trying to bullshit him and that _isn't going to work_ , he can't help but confess, "I ran into Tony."

It is usually impossible to tear Clint away from his gaming console—so far, only the promise of free Chinese take-out has been able to do the trick—so it really says something about how hopelessly gone on Tony Steve is that Clint pauses his game and he puts down his controller without hesitation. Clint then swings his legs off his bed, levels Steve with an incredulous stare, and intones, "Tony? As in, Tony Stark, resident eccentric genius who lives down the hall from us? That Tony?"

Steve bites his bottom lip and worries at the chapped skin with his teeth. He and Clint have only known each other since they moved in together a couple months ago, but they're both ex-military and though their temperaments are dissimilar, they get along well. It helps that Clint reminds Steve of his best friend from childhood, Bucky; Steve dreads the day they meet and bond over their mutual fondness for stupid pranks, ridiculous puns, the love of darts, and making Steve squirm. Steve hasn't told anyone about his feelings for Tony, but he knows he can trust Clint, and there's really no way he can keep them a secret. So Steve nods, letting his emotions show on his face.

Without preamble, Clint tilts his head back and lets out a loud burst of laughter. Clint's entire body shakes with it and, by the time he's done, there are tears in his eyes and his arms are wrapped around his sides as though to keep his lungs from bursting out of his rib cage. At this point, some of Steve's embarrassment has turned into irritation, and he thinks, _Okay, he's even more like Bucky than I want him to be._

"What is it with you and impossible tasks?" Clint grins manically. "First the Marines, then the football team, now Tony Stark? Does challenge offend you?"

"I'm on scholarship!" Steve says and pretends that he didn't sound as scandalized as he did. "Clint, you know that. If I don't do well, I'm screwed. And as for Tony, I—he's just—"

Steve cuts himself off. He can trust Clint, sure, but that doesn't mean he wants to tell Clint the sad truth that he's only spoken to Tony a grand total of two times, and that those conversations amounted to no more than ten minutes of speech. Steve especially doesn't want to tell Clint about how he pauses every time he passes room #216 or that he crosses campus between his classes with the hope that he might catch a glimpse of Tony and his bright red coat. He wants to tell Clint about how he feels about Tony—how he wants to see movies with him, have dinner with him, hold his hand and kiss him and touch his skin—even less.

"Tell you what," Clint says when it's clear that Steve won't be contributing anything else. He pulls out his cell phone and types something into a text message. "Since you're a good roommate and we're bros, I'm going to do you a solid."

"I'm not sure how I feel about that," Steve replies. He's teasing—mostly.

"I told you about that girl I met in my World Politics class, right? The red-head with the Russian Studies major?"

"Natalie?"

"Natasha," Clint corrects as he hits send. "Anyway, she's friends with this other chick, Pepper Potts, who is apparently Tony's best friend slash secretary slash platonic life partner. I'll get her number from Nat and then you can text Pepper to get the inside information. From what Nat has told me, you're gonna want Pepper on your side, trust me."

Steve swallows and imagines letting a complete stranger know about his amorphous feelings for Tony. Hell, he hasn't even mentioned Tony to Bucky, even though Bucky had been there for the other two people Steve had fallen in love with: Sharon Carter in high school and Sam Wilson back on base, neither of which had ended well. Shaking the bad memories from his head, Steve asks, "Don't you think that's too forward?"

"Too forward?" Clint laughs again, though less hysterically this time. "Dude, from what I know about Tony Stark, the only way you're going to get his attention is to either dance in front of him wearing nothing but a coconut bra and a banana hammock, or hit him in the head with brick."

Clint's phone beeps before Steve can try to defend Tony (even though he has no way of knowing if what Clint is saying is true or not). Clint lets out a triumphant whoop and hands his phone to Steve. The message from Natasha reads:

"This is going to end badly," Steve mutters as he reluctantly programs Pepper's number into his phone. An odd combination of nervousness and hope twists in the bottom of his stomach, neither pleasant nor unpleasant.

"It will only go wrong if we don't give this mission a fancy name." Clint taps his chin thoughtfully as Steve hands his cell back. "What about—"

"No," Steve says.

"But you didn't even—"

" _No._ "


	4. in which pepper is underhanded

The rest of the world falls away when Tony is elbow deep in his robot, so it's a surprise when someone tugs the bud out of his ear.

"You're going to render yourself deaf," Pepper says as she steps back, mindful of the small torch in Tony's gloved hands. Styx's _Renegade_ tinkles out of the tiny speaker.

"It's against federal law to listen to classic rock at less than eighty decibels," Tony replies. He quickly attaches the last of the wires within the body of his robot; Pepper knows better than to interrupt him when he welds, just as Tony knows better than to keep Pepper waiting. "Also, I have to hear it above the torch. We talked about this."

"We also talked about auditory loss, Tony." Pepper sighs as Tony turns off the gas, and it is a surprisingly loud sound in the sudden quiet of the lab. "Hearing aides are not sexy."

"It's called trendsetting, Pep." Tony stands, takes off his thick welding gloves, and pushes his goggles up onto the top of his head. "I'll make them sexy."

"I feel like I've had this conversation with you in high school, except the words 'hearing aid' were replaced with 'dinner jacket'."

"That dinner jacket was the height of class."

"Tony, there is nothing remotely classy about maroon velvet."

After Tony washes his hands and forearms and wipes the grime off his horn-rimmed glasses—how dirt manages to get past his goggles, Tony will never know—he hops on one of the steel stools. "So what brings you to my humble abode?" Tony asks. "Actually, how did you get in? Did you finally manage to get sour old Lehnsherr to give you access, or did you bribe one of the grad students again?"

Pepper raises one of her perfectly sculpted eyebrows as though to convey the thought, _What do you think?_

Quickly, Tony glances around the room. Hank doesn't come in on Monday nights—those are his date nights with his wife, Jan—and Reed is over by the machine he built for his thesis, muttering under his breath and doodling on his clipboard. (At least, Tony calls it doodling; Reed's the only person who can make theoretical mathematics look like a five year old scribbled on a piece of paper.) Bruce is by his usual station as well, but he's abandoned his work in favor of stammering at the pretty brunette who hadn't been there ten minutes ago.

"Okay," Tony says as he turns back to Pepper, who has her equivalent of a smug grin on her face. "Bringing Betty? That's cheating. _Cheating._ I'll let it slide this time, but this is officially going into the rules as a illegal maneuver."

"Noted," Pepper concedes. "Now, when's the last time you ate?"

After running into Steve on Sunday morning, Tony had changed into a pair of jeans, an old Metallica t-shirt, and his favorite hoodie before ducking out of his dorm. He even let Loki get the last word—though Tony got to give the last finger—as he beat his retreat to the lab. Reed had barely acknowledged Tony as he slunk in, which had suited Tony just fine. (Reed is a genius, but he and Tony have always managed to rub each other the wrong way. It's best if they ignore each other as much as possible.) Normally, Tony didn't eat when he was in the lab, so he takes a moment to mull over the question.

"Do coffee grounds count?"

"No, Tony, coffee grounds do not qualify as sustenance."

"I think I had a bag of Cheetos around eight?" Tony guesses. He vaguely remembers grabbing something orange out of the vending machine and scarfing it down. It could just as easily have been Reese's Pieces. "It was after the coffee grounds, but before Bruce got here. Yeah, it was eight twenty-something."

"Which would be over nine hours ago," Pepper deadpans.

Tony glances at the digital clock mounted to the wall. Sure enough, it's a quarter to six and Pepper is giving him a look that is equal parts worry, concern, and 'how the hell are you still alive'. He pastes a smile on his face and tries, "Did you know that time measured as a linear system is thought by some to be a human construct?"

"Get your coat."

_It's a shame that Pepper is so practical,_ Tony thinks as he slips off his stool and dutifully goes off in search of his jacket. _That theory trick always works with Bruce._

.

Somehow, Tony finds himself back at Pepino's, splitting a Chicago deep dish four ways with Pepper, Natasha, and Maria. The three of them are talking about their business classes while Tony tucks into his food. He is never hungry until someone forces him to eat; then he's ravenous, and eats until he thinks he might explode. It is only through the joint efforts of Pepper and Rhodey that Tony does not resemble a very thin and breakable twig. On the other hand, it's thanks to Thor, who occasionally drags Tony to the gym with him, and Happy, Tony's boxing partner, that Tony doesn't have the same mass as a great whale.

Eventually, Tony finishes gorging himself and leans back, idly crunching on the ice cubes from his water. It is only then that he notices just how creepily Natasha is staring at him.

"Hey," Tony leers exaggeratedly, because if there's one thing Tony has learned over the years, it's to never show fear in front of Natasha. She can smell it, much like a shark can smell blood in the water. Fear only encourages her.

"Save it, Stark," Natasha says, but her icy tone is at war with the way the corners of her mouth turn fractionally upwards.

"You're the one who was staring," Tony counters, and preens dramtically. "I know it's hard not to, so I'll forgive you for your transgressions."

At this point, Pepper and Maria have tuned into his and Natasha's conversation. Pepper has a faint smile on her face, but Maria looks like she's swallowed a whole lemon. Tony can never figure out if that's her default expression or if that's her default expression around _him_. He has a distinct feeling it's the latter; unlike Natasha, whose snark is a pretense for her genuine affection, Maria has never really liked Tony, and her hostility means that Tony has never really liked her. They tolerate each other for Pepper's sake, but there is no love lost between them.

"You really don't know," Natasha says after a moment, her words breaking the awkward eye contact between Tony and Maria. There's a wide grin on her face; her smiles never fail to strike apprehension into the deepest corners of Tony's weak heart, because he knows that they hide something sinister. Natasha shifts on her seat and props her elbows on the ugly, plastic, red and white checkered tablecloth. "And even though I know better, I am deeply amused."

"Are you broken?" Tony asks, intrigued, at the same time Pepper, with a note of warning in her voice, says," _Natasha._ "

Tony looks at Pepper, who wears her patented Disapproving Scowl. It's a disconcerting to see such a familiar look directed at someone other than himself, but Natasha's grin merely widens. It's strange to know that Pepper's expression works on Tony but not on Natasha; maybe its effectiveness is reduced because they're dating, but Tony is unwilling to test that theory. Natasha and Maria would kill him and hide his body in a place it could never be found if he tried to pull any moves on Pepper.

"I'm not going to say anything," Natasha continues, rolling her shoulders in a small shrug. "I just want it noted that I am a very amused outside observer. It's almost like I'm watching the Discovery Channel special—a very, very awkward special."

Tony does not know why his brain makes the leap from Natasha's vague comment to Steve, but for one very terrifying moment, Tony wonders who told Natasha about his ridiculous and adolescent crush. Blind panic grips him, his blood pressure sky rockets, and his flight or fight instincts are telling him to get the hell out of Dodge—then his logic kicks in. The only person he's specifically told about Steve was Rhodey, and Rhodey would never tell anyone about Steve—which is partly why Tony told him anything in the first place—and Thor is about as prone to gossip as he is to leaving a box of strawberry PopTarts alone, which is to say not at all. Loki is the only person Tony can imagine saying anything, but he and Natasha are about as compatible as two wet cats in a burlap sack.

Amusing, but ultimately destructive, and a terrible, _terrible_ idea.

As the dread dies in Tony, it is swiftly replaced by confusion. He covers it up with a laugh that fools no one, but allows Tony to focus. "Awkward?" he jokes. "Natasha, baby, I am a smooth running machine of love."

Next to Pepper, Maria smothers what is no doubt condescending, "As if!" Not for the first time, Tony really, really regrets hitting on her when they were freshmen. In Tony's defense, she had been utterly charmed until he puked on her rather expensive purple stilettos. Also, that was how she met Pepper, so Tony thinks he deserves some credit and less hostility.

"This conversation is rapidly spiraling out of control," Pepper says. It's a blunt subject change and doesn't measure up to her normally beautiful and masterful transitions, but everyone at the table is willing to let it slide. Especially Tony, who has managed up until that moment to forget how clean Steve smelled and how his veins were vivid underneath the thin skin of his wrists. "I motion to continue on to the next topic. All those in favor?"

Tony raises his water glass and says, "Aye!" along with Maria and Natasha.

"The motion is passed," Pepper proclaims, and taps her fist against the tabletop like a makeshift gavel. Tony laughs again, but this time, it's completely genuine.


	5. in which bruce tricks tony with skittles

Tony gets back to his dorm just before eight.

He's not surprised to find that the room is empty. Thor spends as much time at Loki's off-campus apartment as he does on campus—if not more—but Tony can't fault the guy. Tony has been to Loki's a handful of times and is always impressed by the spacious studio loft with its state-of-the-art appliances and electronics; once, Tony had snuck a peak in the master bedroom, and whistled at the sight of Loki's huge, indulgent California king. It is certainly a step up from their small dorm room and the narrow beds they were provided.

A few semesters ago, Thor had guiltily confessed that what he enjoyed most about Loki's apartment was the privacy. Again, Tony had a hard time holding Thor's confession against him. He had to immediately bleach his brain with tequila afterwards—the thought of Thor and Loki doing the horizontal tango made Tony's blood curdle—but Tony got it, he really did. Instead, he had very deliberately wondered how Loki afforded such a nice place. He was putting money on mob connections; he had met Loki's father, halfway through his third semester, and that experience was terrifying enough to last Tony a lifetime.

(Really, it's a wonder Loki isn't more sinister than he is.)

Tony likes Thor and considers him one of his best friends—on par with Pepper and Rhodey—but there are times when he's grateful to have the room to himself. He lets out a groan as he flicks the lights on, toes off his Chucks, and barely manages the five steps before he falls forward into The Pit. It's a little hard to breathe with one of Thor's sweaters mauling his face, but Tony is no quitter.

A blissful minute passes before there's a gentle knock on the still open door, and Steve—Steve, of _course_ it's Steve, it couldn't be anyone else, like Happy or Luke Cage or even Justin Hammer, who Tony imagines setting on fire sometimes, but yeah, it's _Steve_ —says, "Tony?"

"Mmmphhhgghhffff," Tony very crossly tells the universe.

"I'm not even sure what that was supposed to be." Tony hears Steve shift, the subtle whisper of cloth the only noise in the room. "Can I come in?"

Tony knows that the polite thing to do would be to remove himself from The Pit and offer Steve a chair, but he's full of grease and carbohydrates, and he might be succumbing to a tryptophan induced coma, so he raises his arm and beckons the other man in. (Tony also doesn't want to pull himself up until he's sure his cheeks aren't the same color as a _Wild Strawberry_ Crayola crayon, but that's another story entirely.) He listens to Steve walk in, pull out a desk chair, and sit down.

Steve is sitting down.

Steve is sitting down, in his dorm room.

Steve is sitting down, in his dorm room, and the only reason Tony isn't hyperventilating is because Thor's sweater won't allow him to draw in enough air.

"Is this a bad time?" Steve asks as Tony tries, and fails, not to come across as a complete idiot. Normally, Tony is much more charming around the people he finds attractive—the Maria Incident and That Time With That Guy At That Bar That Shall Never Be Mentioned notwithstanding—but Steve gives off specific wave that interferes with Tony's suavity. It's like that moment in a con movie when the techie jams the vault sensors/cell phone signal/radar with unmentioned devices, except in reverse and totally not as cool.

"Tony?" Steve asks again, his voice soft and unsure. Tony nearly jumps when one of his hands, big and warm, curls around his shoulder.

It's a struggle to fight off Thor's sweater and then sit up, but Tony manages. "Yeah, no," Tony mutters as he rearranges himself, settles down in the center of the Pit, tucks his knees to his chest, and put his chin atop his bony patellae. His glasses are askew so he tucks them on top of his head; he only needs to wear them when he's reading or wiring, anyway.

"That wasn't really an answer." Steve settles back into the desk chair—Tony's desk chair, of course, how does the universe think Tony is going to function knowing his rear end is where Steve's once was—and smiles tentatively. "Are you feeling better?"

"Huh?" Tony grunts, which isn't much of an answer either.

"You still look a little flushed, but not as bad as yesterday." Steve shifts and his gaze flickers to the Ke$ha poster Loki had taped to the wall during their first week back. Tony knew better than to try and take it down. Experience has taught Tony the hard way that Loki would just replace it with something more obnoxious. "Not that you looked bad yesterday, you never look _bad_ , you just weren't quite put together—umm, that is, I mean—"

Tony admires the way Steve very determinedly closes his mouth. Rhodey and Pepper have despaired of Tony ever shutting his mouth even when he really, _really_ should.

"I looked like shit," Tony continues with a nonchalant shrug, voicing the truth so Steve won't have to. "It happens every now and then, especially when Rhodey's buying. That guy is really loose with his money after a few beers."

"But you're better now?" Steve asks. If Tony didn't know that Steve probably thinks he's a crazy person with a bad case of word vomit, he would have said that Steve was earnest. Then again, maybe he is. Steve seems like he would be one of those people that genuinely cares for everyone who crosses his path, a real-life boy scout who walks little old ladies across the street and saves small animals from tree branches and burning buildings.

"A little better, yeah," Tony murmurs. "I just need more than three hours of sleep."

As soon as the words come out of his mouth, Tony wants to reel them back in. Steve's tentative smile collapses into guilt; he even winces, as though the words had physically slapped him. Tony opens his mouth to babble about how his comment was just a random string of words, not a passive aggressive suggestion, and that he doesn't really need sleep when his blood has more caffeine molecules than hemoglobin, but Steve beats him to it.

"You're right." Steve rubs the back of his neck self-consciously. He casts his gaze to the cream-colored shag rug that Tony still hasn't burned and his eyes are very blue even underneath the shadow of his lashes. "Sorry about intruding. I was just—concerned, you know?"

"You didn't intrude, trust me. I know intruding. Loki is the king of intrusions, and he's here practically every other day. He's like Germany in World War II; he just shows up uninvited. He also steals my dried fruit and likes to switch my engineering notes into my humanities binder. You have done neither, so that makes you okay in my book. In fact, you're a better house guest than Loki ever was or ever will be. You should come around more often and show him what manners are, and yes, that was a standing invitation."

Tony doesn't know what he says to make Steve smile again—usually, his barrage of words make other people frown—but he's grateful to have erased the guilt. Steve should never look guilty, especially since it makes Tony want to do ridiculous things, like apologize. Tony Stark does not do apologies.

"Any time?"

"Any time. The door is almost always open unless Thor and me aren't here, or Thor and Loki bumping uglies on the rug. I'm in the lab a lot too, probably about as much as I am here, and I have full days on Tuesday and Thursday, and I get kidnapped a lot because nobody thinks I eat right. But yeah, other than that, I'm here."

"That doesn't sound like any time to me," Steve teases. Tony can't help but look at his full mouth; his lips are chapped from the cold November air and a hint of his white teeth are behind the wry twist of his grin. It would have been overwhelming if Tony weren't already a thirteen year old girl for Steve. As it is, Tony has to drag his gaze from Steve's mouth to his nose—which he promptly drags to Steve's earlobe, because even Steve's nose makes Tony want to compose badly formed sonnets. "But that's alright. I don't have a lot of spare time either, to be honest."

A short silence falls. Exhaustion creeps up to Tony despite his valiant attempts to shake it off. He's been awake for over thirty-six hours and the last time he had coffee was just before Pepper dragged him from the lab. He can feel his shoulders sagging and his eyelids drooping. All he really wants is to stay awake and talk to Steve (or blabber at Steve, which is what happens most of the time) but he's fighting a losing battle.

"I'm sorry," Steve says again.

"You really have to stop apologizing. I'm going to get a complex."

"You're tired and I intruded. I think an apology is warranted." Steve gets up from the desk chair and half-turns to grab something off the cluttered desk. Tony tries not to admire the curve of Steve's thigh beneath his jeans. "Anyway, the reason I dropped why was to give you this."

In Steve's hands is a glass container with a cherry red lid. In his dazed, exhausted stupor, it takes Tony a few seconds to realize that Steve is handed him what boils down to a giant bowl of chicken noodle soup. Tony has to use both hands take the container.

"That's a lot of soup," Tony jokes.

"It's my mother's recipe," Steve explains. "I was sick all the time when I was a kid and she made it for me every time. I'm pretty sure I didn't do it half as well as she did."

Tony imagines Steve downstairs, in the cramped kitchen that the dorm tenants can use if they want to cook something for themselves, instead of heading to the cafeteria or heading off campus to grab a bite to eat. Soup from scratch takes time—even Tony knows that—and the kindness of the gesture makes something stick in Tony's throat.

"Steve," Tony says, trying and failing not to let his voice catch. "This is great. Thank you."

Steve beams at him, his smile wide and earnest. It makes him look like a complete dork, but he's still so handsome and wonderful that Tony's heart hurts. He replies, "It was my pleasure," as though it truly was.

Steve leaves not long after, biding Tony good night and closing the door behind him. Only when Tony is sure he's gone—he listens closely for the soft click of another door, but doesn't manage to hear one—does he drop his gaze back down to his gift.

"I am so fucked," Tony tells the soup.

Despite being an inanimate object, the soup manages to very emphatically agree.

.

The chicken noodle soup sits in the mini-fridge until Tuesday night, when Tony takes it out and squirrels it into the small break room by the lab. There it stays until Wednesday afternoon, when Bruce manages to pull Tony away from his robot for a few minutes with an admittedly genius method.

"Did you seriously leave a trail of Skittles from my worktable to the break room, or am I hallucinating again?" Tony asks as he plops down in one of the cheap, bright orange plastic chairs that surround the lounge's even cheaper fold-up table. He had been fiddling with the design for his robot's hand when he spotted a lime colored candy next to his screwdriver; he had been able to ignore it for all of three seconds, before curiosity had gotten the better of him. "Because if I'm hallucinating, that is the tastiest one I've ever had."

Bruce makes a face that is as curious as it is horrified. "Tony, you didn't actually _eat_ those Skittles, did you?"

"Only the ones on my worktable," Tony says truthfully—well, mostly truthfully. The red ones were his favorite and he was a firm believer in immunization through inoculation. A little dirt never hurt anyone.

"I'm fairly certain the lab floor is more sanitary than your worktable," Bruce mutters. Behind him, the microwave dings; he turns around and pulls out a bowl of spicy Nong Shim ramen. The smell makes Tony's stomach rumble and he casts a longing stare at the cheap noodles. Bruce sighs and says, " _No,_ Tony, you can't steal my lunch again. Go get something out of the vending machine or risk whatever's in the Pyrex container."

"Oh, the glass one?" Tony asks, even as his brain reminds him that the contents of said container are less unknown than Bruce thinks.

"Yeah. I'm guessing it's something Jan made for Hank, and he's just keeping it in there until it goes bad so he doesn't have to eat it. Otherwise it's Lehnsherr's infamous matzo ball soup, and woe be to anyone who mistakenly eats it. Do you remember what happened last time?"

"Poor McCoy," Tony agrees as he gets out of his chair and takes Steve's soup out of the fridge. "But this is mine. I just forgot I put it in there."

Ignoring the stunned, incredulous expression on Bruce's face, Tony hops off his chair and grabs the soup out of the fridge. He then takes the lid off the container, sticks it in the microwave, hits the three, and wages war with the green ' **START** ' button before it reluctantly throws radiation at his food. (Despite being used by half the engineering department and nearly all of the science grad students on a regular basis, and having been disassembled and tweaked at least seven times, that button refuses to cooperate.) He rummages through the cabinets and finds some plastic spoons and an old pack of stale saltines, the latter of which he crumples into his soup when it's heated. It's hot enough he has to use the hem of his t-shirt to carry it back to the table. When Tony sits down, he is met with Bruce's still shocked face.

"You _brought_ food?" Bruce sputters.

"Yeah?" Tony says as he stirs the soggy mess of crackers. Sodium is Tony's third favorite food group, after caffeine and alcohol. "So?"

"So? _So?_ Tony, I have known you for over three years and worked in the same lab space as you for half that, and you have never brought food. Half the time you blindly jab at the vending machine when your system demands something other than coffee, and the other half is when somebody tricks or forces you into eating."

"It's not that bad," Tony mutters.

"It is that bad." Bruce eyes the chicken noodle soup. "Has Pepper finally achieved the impossible and guilted you into taking care of yourself?"

"Since when does Pepper make me do anything I don't want to? Maybe I'm a big boy who can take care of himself."

"You're my friend Tony, and you're a good friend, so don't take it too poorly when I tell you that alien invasion is more likely than you taking good care of yourself."

Tony would take more offense if he was less self-aware; as it is, he knows that he is easily distracted by his machines and can forget that—much like one of those finicky tropical plants his mom favors—he needs to be fed and watered regularly. This is why he merely snorts mockingly at Bruce's comment instead of trying to refute it. Then, he takes a brimming spoonful of soup into his mouth.

The first bite is hotter than Tony expected. It burns the tip of his tongue and scalds the roof of his mouth. Bruce laughs when Tony grimaces, but Tony is starving and he's drunk enough cups of near boiling coffee to be deterred by the temperature. The soup is slightly salty, probably from the saltines, but he eats and eats until the huge container is empty.

"So are you going to tell me who made this magical soup?" Bruce asks as Tony tosses the disposable spoon into the garbage can and gets up to rinse the glass container out in the sink.

With a smile that Bruce can't see, Tony answers, "My lips are sealed, Mr. Banner."

Bruce just rolls his eyes.


	6. interlude ii: in which clint word vomits

When Steve returns to his dorm room, Natasha is kicking Clint and Maria's asses in Mario Kart.

"That was fast," Maria comments without glancing from the flat screen television, poker-faced, at the same time as Pepper, who is perched neatly upon Clint's cheap swivel chair, asks, "How did it go?"

Steve can't help the smile that spreads across his face. He knows that the helpless and broad beaming looks a little dumb—Bucky had always called it 'The Sharon Face' back in high school, but that was before he and Sharon had a falling out, before he joined the military, and before he met Sam—but Steve doesn't duck his head in embarrassment to hide it, like he used to. Instead, he lets the expression grow until it hurts his cheeks and breathes, "It was fantastic."

Out of the corner of Steve's eye, he sees Yoshi drive right off the Rainbow Road.

"Come on, man!" Clint cries as he throws his controller onto his bed. "You don't have to give us all the gory details!"

"Details are essential for the successful completion of our mission," Natasha interjects. Her character, Bowser, crosses the finish line with nearly half-a-lap lead. She sets her own racing wheel down and raises a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at Clint. "Did they teach you nothing in spy school?"

"The only classes I didn't sleep through were _Cool Gadgets and Their Uses_ and _Femme Fatale 101_."

"Is that why we're playing espionage with Tony?" Maria asks as she finishes the race behind Natasha. Her grin is quietly amused, but the mirth is more shark-like than kind. "Because he's the enemy?"

"Only if Steve is James Bond." Clint drags his eyes from up from Steve's brown shoes to the tips of his short hair. Then, in a terrible and droll English accent, he inquires, "You haven't slept with the enemy again, have you Mr. Bond?"

Natasha plucks Clint's pillow from the bed and hits him with it. Clint roars like a dying rhino, unnecessarily loud and over-dramatic in the small confines of their dorm, before pretending to fall over dead. Nonchalant, Natasha tosses the pillow atop his corpse.

"Anthony Stark isn't a poorly disguised double entendre for something sexual, so I doubt Mr. Bond and he have done the horizontal tango," Pepper interjects.

"It takes two to tango." Maria tucks a strand of hair that has escaped her high ponytail behind her ear. "And I think we all know how eager Tony is to tango."

Pepper's mouth quirks downwards into a frown, just as Steve splutters, "I wouldn't!", his voice rising dangerously on the second syllable and cracking tragically. 

Four sets of eyes turn to Steve. Unfortunately, this is when his hindbrain conjures the image of Tony spread out on the indulgent and expensive rug in his dorm, every inch of his olive skin bare and his eyes fever-bright. It makes Steve panic because, even though he's fairly certain no one can read his mind, he can feel the guilty blush burn his cheeks. Perhaps this is why he blurts, "You can't have sex in just ten minutes!"

Somewhere, someplace, a cricket lets out a single, awkward chirp.

" _Jesus,_ " Clint blasphemes loudly from the floor. His laughter punches out of him as he rolls onto his side and clutches his sides. "Oh—oh god—what are you even— _I can't—_ "

"Don't be an asshole," Natasha says, and digs her toes viciously into Clint's ribs.

Steve can feel the heat in his cheeks multiply and creep into his ears and down his neck. He isn't ashamed of his sexuality nor is he inexperienced—it's been ages since he and Sharon learned their way around their bodies in the bed of her pick-up truck, and he and Sam had been together for almost two years—but he always seems to revert to his scrawny, uncertain sixteen-year-old self when confronted by genuine affection. The misunderstanding makes Steve want to explain what he really meant; he wants to tell his small audience that his first time with Tony would never, could never, be contained by ten miniscule minutes. If Steve ever had the chance to be with Tony so intimately, he would damn well take his time.

"It's not you I was worried about," Pepper reassures Steve as Natasha jumps off her chair and proceeds to smother Clint's continual snickering with the discarded pillow. Clint wriggles as helplessly as a fish on dry land beneath Natasha's ninja assault. "It's just that Tony has never been… frugal with his physical affections."

"He's a giant man-whore," Maria translates, snorting contemptuously. Pepper puts her hand on Maria's shoulder and levels her with an exasperated and tired stare—Steve wonders how often they argue about Tony—but Maria simply shrugs, unapologetic.

It takes a few minutes for the five of them to settle down and regroup. Steve belatedly remembers his manners and offers the girls whatever he and Clint have in the mini-fridge. Pepper takes a Diet Coke while Maria and Natasha gleefully split Clint's last Red Bull. Having relocated from the floor to his bed, Clint mutters something about nepotism as he grabs a bag of pretzel sticks.

"I still maintain that we should give this bad boy a top-secret code name," Clint drawls thoughtfully. He is holding one of the pretzel sticks between his two fingers as though it were a cigarette, and stares at the ceiling in deep contemplation. "And, as I am the person who brought our merry band together, I say I should have the privilege—nay, the honor!—of deciding what exactly that code name should be."

"Your code names were contrived at best, Robin Hood," Natasha scoffs.

"He _told_ you them?" exclaims Steve.

Natasha turns to Steve and deadpans, "He made a list."

"Oh god," Steve mutters. It's all he can do to keep from putting his head in his hands.

"They were brilliant!" Clint cries dramatically, shaking his faux cigarette at them in indignation. "Why am I friends with you two again? All you do is put me down and tell me no!"

"The point of codename, Clint, is to refer to the mission without disclosing the objective to anyone who could be listening," Natasha says, rattling off the sentence with such speed and irritation that Steve wonders how often she's repeated herself since she gave Clint Pepper's number. Knowing Clint, the answer was probably a lot. "Your suggestions were neither subtle nor concise."

"Hey!" Clint objects, even though he wears a roguish smile. "I thought Operation: Get Tony Stark To—"

" _We are not talking about this!_ " Steve all but shouts.

"—was pretty damn concise." Clint's cat-who-got-the-canary expression melts under the heat of Steve, Natasha, and Pepper's identical glares. (Maria is pointedly sipping the Red Bull in a pointed attempt to not laugh. Steve is beginning to think she prefers toxic mold to Tony.) Clint makes a face and continues, "So, what are we just supposed to give the mission a random name. Like, like, I don't know, Operation..."

Clint's eyes roll around their small, tidy room, flickering past the hamper filled with dirty clothes, over the bookshelf built into the wall above their conjoined desks, to the lone, thrift shop coffee mug Steve had left sitting on the top of the mini-fridge.

This is how 'Operation: Tea Cup' gets unfortunate name.

While Clint grouses ruefully about Operation: Tea Cup's new name to Natasha and Maria—both of whom are too amused by Clint's ire to consider changing it—Steve tells Pepper about his short visit with Tony. He talks about Tony's tiredness, his standing invitation, and the chicken noodle soup. Steve gets a smile for the latter, which he already knows is the highest non-verbal form of praise Pepper gives.

"I just want to do this right," Steve confesses softly. He doesn't care how he sounds to Maria or Natasha; Pepper will understand. "It's been a long time since I felt so strongly for someone."

Briefly, Steve thinks about Sharon and her welcoming touch, about Sam and his quick laugh. He had loved both of them intensely and though neither had worked out, for very different reasons, he missed their companionship. He wanted that with Tony—possibly even for the rest of his life.

"If you can get Tony to eat something and remember there's a world outside of his lab, then I am at your complete disposal." Pepper places one of her small hands on Steve's arm. It's a comforting gesture that brings Steve out of his melancholic musings, and Steve smiles gratefully. "Now, what ideas do you have for your next plan of attack?"

Clint shouts, "Roger him, Rogers—" before Natasha can, once again, stifle his nonsense. Even though Steve has had two serious partners and had been a Marine for six years, Clint—like Bucky—has the unfortunate ability to make Steve blush like he is fifteen and helplessly in love with the head cheerleader again.

"I was thinking more along the lines of Pepino's," Pepper deadpans.

The group spends the next half hour planning several dates. Pepper strikes out the idea of taking Tony down to the city and visiting a museum, but endorses the coffee date.

"Just be prepared to pay for a few cups," Pepper warns him. "And don't let Tony drink more than three. He gets a little strange when he has too much caffeine and not enough sleep."

Pepper also gives him several other phone numbers: James Rhodes, Bruce Banner, and Carol Danvers. She promises to text each of them with details and assures Steve that he can, and probably will, have to text each one of them at some point. When they finish, Clint makes them gather in a circle and put a hand in, as though the hour they spent together was a bad team exercise.

"On three," Clint says, pumping the collect mass of hands up and down. "One, two, three—"

"Operation: Tea Cup!"


	7. in which carol gives good advice

It is either very late or very early, that odd time of night when the world is still and silent, and it seems as though nothing is impossible and anything could happen—and Tony is alone in the lab, working on his robot.

This is usually when minor explosions and fires occur.

Earlier that day, around seven o'clock, Lehnsherr had poked his graying head inside. Ostensibly, he had done so to check on the post-grad students (and Tony) before he left for home, but all he had done was grumble about what his partner, a certain overbearing and coquettish geneticist, had planned for dinner. (It was probably some variation of take-out or a pre-made meal that could be thrown in the oven and forgotten about; Professor Xavier was an infamously terrible cook.) Hank wrapped up his experiments not long afterwards, and Sue had broken into the lab to drag Reed away from his space-time mumbo-jumbo machine at eleven. Tony has been by himself for the past three hours; he expects for it to stay that way until Bruce comes in at eight the next morning, so when Carol throws her jacket on the table and plops down on the stool next to Tony, Tony jumps.

"Holy—" Tony exclaims, his eyebrows leaping to his hairline and his shoulders rocketing up to his ears. The screwdriver in his hand sails across the room and clatter on the floor by Hank's workstation. (Throwing whatever he was holding when startled is a weird habit Tony has never been able to control.) "Is it at all possible for people to warn a guy?"

"I did say your name at least three times," Carol replies with a careless shrug. "Dorito?"

Tony glances at the proffered bag and asks, "Are they coffee-flavored?"

"Cool Ranch," Carol says.

Tony doesn't particularly like any flavor of Doritos—he's more of a sea salt and vinegar kind of guy—but he hasn't eaten anything since he polished off Steve's homemade chicken noodle soup. At the mention of food, Tony's stomach makes itself known with a vicious growl, so he snags a handful of chips and eats them quickly and tries to ignore the weird coating of artificial flavoring on his tongue. Hopefully, the pinch of hunger will leave when the meager portion of vending machine staple meets the roiling gastric acid in his stomach.

"You can have more if you'd like."

"Nah." Tony waves the food away. "I'm good."

Tony and Carol sit in companionable silence until Carol finishes off the bag, crumples the bag into a ball, and neatly shoots the ball into a nearby trashcan. She had played basketball in high school, Tony remembers, and received a partial scholarship when she worked on her undergraduate degree.

"Nothing but net!" Tony crows. He lifts his hand for a high-five and completely misses when he swings his palm at Carol's.

"Your aim is broken," Carol teases before she glances thoughtfully at the bags beneath Tony's eyes. "Geez Tones, when is the last time you slept? Your hand-eye coordination usually doesn't suck this much."

In lieu of an answer, Tony merely shrugs. He honestly cannot remember—over thirty hours, maybe?—but that isn't unusual.

"No wonder you look like you're about to collapse."

"If I did, I'd just fall asleep at my workstation. I've done it before." That had happened during the spring semester of his sophomore year, after a three point four day marathon of underactuated robotics and decreasing awareness. Tony had woken to Pepper's Disapproving (But Concerned!) Glare, and an incredibly stiff neck. "My life would be infinitely easier if Lehnsherr let me set up a cot in the back."

Carol snorts derisively. "If there were a cot in the back, you would never leave the lab."

"There's a problem with that?" Tony asks, rhetorical.

Impartial, Carol shrugs again. Her nonchalance is one of her greatest characteristics, in Tony's extremely biased opinion. Unlike many of Tony's other friends, Carol doesn't try to make Tony eat more or sleep more, and she never bribes or cajoles him into doing something that he doesn't want to do. Some people might misconstrue her attitude as apathy, but the reality is that her concern is limited by her scientific policy on observation and non-interference. Or, in layman's terms, Carol believes that Tony should be a hot, hot mess until he overheats and learns better.

(He probably never will.)

"So," Tony says, dragging out the vowel. "What brings you down from on high? I thought you were busy looking through you fancy telescope and charting the known cosmos."

"I was, but the observatory's vending machine was clean out of chips. I came down to the dungeon to pilfer your goods—"

"Whoa, Carol, I didn't know you felt that way about our snack food—"

"—when I saw the light on and figured I'd come by. I have about half an hour to kill before Jessica finishes her night shift and swings by to pick me up; I'm sick of watching the screen blink at me, and it's been awhile since I saw my favorite tinker."

"Tinker?" Tony parrots grasping his chest as though his weak heart has betrayed him. "Tinker? I'm hurt, Carol, I'm hurt deeply."

Carol tips her head back and laughs, her elbows braced on the worktable as her torso trembles, mirthful. Tony has always thought Carol to be incredibly handsome with her sharp jaw, her dramatic blonde undercut, and her sarcastic drawl, but it is her laugh outshines all those other qualities. It had been what first drew Tony to her, three years ago when she was the teacher's assistant in his advanced physics course, and he had attempted to turn his patented Stark Charm™ on her; like Pepper and Natasha before her, Carol had shut him down, equal parts disinterested and amused, and became a good friend instead of an ex-dalliance.

When Carol stops laughing, Tony remarks, "You're lucky it was me in the lab and not someone else. Like Reed. Shit, can you imagine trying to have a conversation with Reed? Even I think his ego is overwhelming."

"Reed isn't crazy enough to be here at three in the morning on a Wednesday night," Carol argues. When Tony makes a highly disdainful noise in the back of his throat, she amends, "Okay, he might be, but Sue is rational enough to drag him away from his research before midnight."

Tony exaggerates a shudder. Carol mock-punches him in the shoulder.

"Don't be like that, Tones. It's nice to have someone take care of you—to take care of someone, too. I'm never in the observatory when Jessica doesn't work. Sometimes it's nice to get away from this bubble of academic research, and she's real good pulling me out of my own mind." Carol pauses and smirks teasingly at Tony. "Not that you'd know what that's like, you workaholic."

There are a million and a half things Tony could use as a response, like, "I bet Jessica is really good at pulling you out of your mind, eh?" and "It isn't work; I'm building a robot, I'm like a four-year-old with his first set of Legos." However, Tony's brain slides past these quips and abruptly conjures an image of Steve, standing in the doorway of Tony's dorm as he smiles gently. Steve could pull anyone out of their mind, least of all Tony, who is so gone on Steve's blue eyes and broad shoulders and Carol has to snap her fingers in front of Tony's face to reclaim his attention.

"Did my mushy feelings break you?" Carol asks slyly.

For a moment, Tony wonders if he should tell her about Steve. She wouldn't tease him for it; more likely she would clap hims on the back and say, "About damn time." She wouldn't judge him, just offer him steady support. Still, Tony can't bring himself to voice such a confession. He wants to keep Steve his selfish secret for a little longer.

So instead, Tony pastes on a grin and says, "I had to start reciting pi to preserve my sanity. Not that you and Jessica aren't absolutely precious—"

"Don't be an asshole!" Carol exclaims, but her words and the second mock-punch she delivers are belied by her wide grin. "I know it's your factory default setting—"

"—no, I'm a tinker, that's my factory default setting, remember?"

"An asshole tinker, maybe."

Tony and Carol share a look at the unintended pun, and giggle-snort as only people who have been awake for too long can. A second silence follows, which is neither uncomfortable nor strained; Carol is one of the few people Tony can be quiet around without feeling awkward. Tony talks a lot, he knows this, but he uses his blabber as a highly effective way to distract people from the worst of his neuroses.

Left to his own thought, Tony pushes the memory of Steve in his doorway aside with a small mental push. To fill the void, he counts the hours since he last slept; when he can no longer argue with himself about when he actually woke up—was it Tuesday or Monday?— he contemplates hopping off his stool and retrieving his screwdriver from Hank's workstation. The idea of moving, however, fills Tony with such lethargy that he emits a jaw-cracking yawn.

"That was quite the yawn," Carol observes dryly. "Most people would consider going to bed, after a performance like that."

"Sheep, all of them."

"If you want, I can walk you back to your dorm," she offers.

"If you want to hold my hand that badly—"

"Someone has to shoulder the responsibility of your virtue, no matter how microscopic—"

"You slay me, Carol, seriously, I am so dead right now—"

"Dead people are not as chatty as you." Carol ignores Tony's deadpan stare and gets off her stool. She grabs her leather bomber jacket off the table and shrugs it on, zipping it to her collarbones and flipping the fur collar up. She looks like a fighter pilot from the forties, gritty and invincible. "Come on, come on, this offer expires in fifteen minutes, give or take."

Tony mutters, "Probably take, I've seen Jessica drive." Carol digs the toe of her shoe into the soft flesh of Tony's calf; Tony yelps and jumps off his stool, moving out of range. "Holy shit, what are your shoes made of? Razor blades?"

Properly motivated by the threat of Carol's wickedly pointed ankle boots and Carol's unimpressed look, Tony retrieves his screwdriver from the vicinity of Hank's workstation, "organizes" his blueprints into a not-so-neat stack, and scrubs the grease of his hands and face in the back sink in two minutes and thirty-seven seconds. Carol grabs his red coat off the peg by the lab's entrance and hands it to him after he's turned down the lights.

"Thanks," Tony murmurs as he pulls his coat on over his old MIT sweater.

Even thusly layered, the cold, early November air knocks into Tony as he and Carol exit the building. Tony swears loudly and pulls the lapels of his coat more tightly over his chest; he might have to break out his scarf and mittens if the weather gets any worse. "I knew leaving the lab was a terrible idea!" he bemoans loudly.

"If you freeze from a four-block walk, I'll put that on your tombstone. 'Here Lieth Anthony Edward Stark: It Was A Terrible Idea'."

By the time they reach Tony's dorm—a nice high rise saved for olders students—Tony's teeth are chattering violently despite the short, brisk walk. Tony fumbles for his I.D. and unlocks the entrance to the empty foyer. As Carol takes out her phone, presumably to text Jessica about her change in location, Tony jumps up and down in place to get his blood pumping.

"She gonna be here soon?" Tony asks as Carol pockets her cell.

"Yeah," Carol answers. "Five minutes, tops. I can just wait here if you want to go to bed."

"Are you sure you don't want me to wait up?"

Carol nods. "Yeah, it's not a problem. Besides, I have a feeling that if you sit down on the couch with me, you'll be out like a light, and I won't be able to wake you back up. I would rather not have to lug you up the stairs."

"Not many can carry the dead weight of such a solid mass of muscle." Tony flexes his arm at Carol; he occasionally boxes with Happy or lifts weights with Thor (except Tony can't bench press a school bus like Thor can), but the lean line of his bicep is invisible beneath the heavy fabric of his red coat. Carol snorts and rolls her eyes.

"Go to bed, Tones," she commands as she knocks her shoulder into Tony's. Not only is she taller than Tony by nearly half a head, but she is much more cognizant, and the small push nearly knocks him over. "No sneaking out after I'm gone."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, Scout's honor."

Tony takes the flight of stairs to the second level, and wishes he had been sensible and taken the elevator when he nearly brains himself halfway up. Without the innards of his robot or Carol's presence to distract him, Tony's tiredness becomes overwhelming. His arms and legs feel are lead, and his eyes are so dry that his eyelids threaten to stick to his eyeballs with every blink.

Being exhausted is gross.

It takes Tony several tries to get his door unlocked—it takes him a minute or so to realize that he's trying to open the lock with his car key instead of his room key—and inside, the room is still and dark. A slice of light from the hallway illuminates the linoleum floor and a fraction of Thor's bed. Thor snores steadily from the Pit, unseen save for a single burly arm dangling off the edge of the mattress. The image looks disconcertingly like the remains of a devoured meal stuck in the teeth of a giant blanket monster.

If that's what really happened, I wouldn't be surprised, Tony thinks groggily. The Pit is one fungal infestation away from becoming sentient.

Tony strips down to his t-shirt and boxers in a haze, flinging his jeans, socks, and sweater into the corner with the rest of his dirty clothes. Then, by some inconceivable miracle, he scales the small ladder up to his bunk without falling to his doom, and wraps himself up in a cotton sheets and down comforter cocoon.

True to Carol's prediction, Tony is asleep as soon as he lies down.


	8. in which tony faces various dilemmas

Between the time Carol escorts Tony back to his dorm and the time Tony's phone alarm goes off at a quarter to nine, Tony has slept for nearly six hours. Considering that he normally sleeps an average of 4.87 hours a day—the occasional ten minute power nap not included—Tony should feel as fresh as spring daisy.

Tony is neither fresh nor a spring daisy.

Blearily, Tony grabs his glasses off the small bedside tray attached to his bunk, reluctantly emerges from the cocoon of his warm comforter, climbs down the short ladder, and fishes his phone out of the pocket of his discarded jeans. He jabs blindly at random buttons until the blaring stops.

For a moment, Tony contemplates crawling back into bed. The world beyond the pulled-aside blackout curtain is overcast and dreary, and everyone walking around is layered in thick sweaters and thicker coats. Tony hates the cold; as soon as he's able, he's moving to someplace perpetually warm. Like Malibu.

Unfortunately, Tony does not have the option of sleeping in—as Tuesdays and Thursdays are full days for him—and he doesn't have the luxury of skipping class either. He had been given full lab access in his junior year and, instead of attending a majority of his classes, Tony had spent all his time squirreled away tinkering with what would eventually become his senior thesis. Though he maintained a high grade point average in each of his classes, Tony's truancy had eventually been brought to Lehnsherr's attention.

"Access to the lab is a privilege, Stark, especially for an undergraduate like yourself," Lehnsherr told Tony crisply, an iron edge of reproach behind his stoic demeanor. "I will revoke said privilege if I hear about another absence."

With anyone else, Tony would have called bluff and continued with his behavior, but Tony had quickly learned that Lehnsherr was not someone to call bluff with. He had heard stories about Lehnsherr's wild youth, okay, and even before the google search he had still believed half of what the rumors claimed. As it turned out, the half Tony had not believed—the arsonist, anarchist cell half—had it's own distantly terrifying Wikipedia page. Tony may be obstinate, but he isn't _stupid_.

So Tony gets dressed. He struggles to get the appropriate appendage into the correct sleeve—if he accidentally sticks his leg into the arm of his old tennis varsity sweater, well, it wouldn't be the first time—slips into a pair of fleece-lined sweatpants, steals Thor's sherpa hat from the Pit, and finally dons his red coat. Thus girded against the impending temperature drop, Tony reluctantly begins making his way to his first class.

.

Tony spends most of Thursday in a fugue state. He goes through the motions of attending class and absorbs absolutely no new information. Rhodey texts him around noon and they grab lunch at the student union; Tony gets Chinese and Rhodey gets a burger. Afterwards, Tony powers through two more classes and a lab. Bruce is the TA for Tony's lab, so when they're finished, they go have dinner at the small dining hall on the north side of campus. They argue about the plausibility of recent scientific discoveries over messy, hard shell tacos until Tony's yawns start to audibly crack his jaw.

"You're exhausted, Tony," Bruce says gently. "Go to bed."

"You go to bed," Tony replies.

When Bruce and Tony part ways—Bruce lives off campus in the most minimalistic efficiency Tony has ever seen—Tony thinks about ignoring Bruce's advice and his own flagging energy and putting in another ill-advised night at the lab. He's so close to discovering why his robot isn't working to his exact specifications that he every hour he doesn't spend in the lab feels wasted and ineffective. It's only a matter of time before the metaphorical lightbulb goes off, and the sooner it goes off, the better.

Yet while Tony's brain is busy flicking through every detail involving his project, his body is slowing down. He needs a full night of rest before he collapses; it's happened several times in the past, and every time Pepper draws the short stick and lectures him about learning his limits.

"No one can keep a constant watch over you, Tony," she always chides. "You're more human than I know you want to admit, so please try to remember that you can't recharge your batteries by plugging yourself into an electrical socket. At least try to get eight hours of sleep once or twice a week, okay?"

It isn't the lecture that makes Tony listen—Tony's father, Howard, had made Tony immune to lectures by repeated exposure by the time he was _nine_ —but the unfiltered concern in Pepper's eyes. Though Tony will never take good care of himself, he can be guilted into taking at least marginal care of himself.

(Which, in retrospect, is probably why Pepper always delivers the lecture. No one can guilt him as easily as she can, not even Rhodey.)

So for the second night in a row, Tony trudges back to his dorm. He congratulates himself on his personal growth as he toes out of his boots and throws his coat over the back of his desk chair, and firmly ignores the small, peevish voice in his head that informs him that a statistical anomaly does not constitute a behavioral change.

"Whatever," Tony mutters into his pillow as he folds his blanket around his body like a burrito. "Nobody cares about your averages, anyway."

.

Tony wakes up on Thursday morning to Rebecca Black's _Friday_ and Loki's unholy smirk mocking him over the guardrail.

"Is this going to be your new thing?" Tony groans as he tries to rub the tacky vestiges of sleep from his eyes. It works marginally.

"I have not yet decided," Loki replies, but the smirk on his face is as amused as it is mischievous.

(Unfortunately, said expression is the same expression he wore when he first tacked a _My Little Pony_ poster to the wall when they were freshmen. Tony had stared at the poster for hours before taking it down, crumpling it up, and throwing it into the trashcan. Loki had only replaced it with a poster covered in stylized butterflies and—when Tony threw that one away as well—he put a Justin Bieber tour poster in its place.

The Poster War could have ended at that, but Tony was as stubborn as Loki was single-minded. When Tony tattled to Thor and demanded that he "reign his boyfriend in", Thor shrugged nonchalantly and insisted that Loki's actions were all in good fun.

"You are the worst roommate ever," Tony had hissed.

To add insult to injury, Tony had once come back from his physics lab early to find Thor traitorously helping Loki make sure that the _Titanic_ movie poster on the wall was straight. Tony had only forgiven Thor when the other man brought him a baker's dozen of the house specialty doughnuts from Fury's.

"Whiner," Loki sneered.

"You're just sour that Thor loves me more," Tony said around his doughnut.

Eventually, Tony learned to live with the odd posters and no longer took them down. Loki did not stop finding terrible posters—it actually might have been impressive if it weren't so irritating—but the rotation frequency was less than if Tony actively removed them. Once, Loki had left a Celine Dion poster up for a record thirty-nine days and it hadn't been _that_ terrible.)

"I hate you so much right now," Tony says emphatically.

Loki snickers. "I live to serve."

Thor joins Loki a moment later, wrapping once of his burly arms around Loki's shoulder while he holds onto the loft's metal frame with his free hand. His usual, cheerful grin is firmly planted on his face even though it's—Tony grabs his phone off the small tray attached to one of the loft's poles—urg, 8:13 a.m. Morning people have always inspired equal amounts of awe and loathing in Tony, who is only a morning person if he has been awake the entire night as well.

"Good morning, my friend!" Thor greets at his usual decibel, which is to say, his voice booms over Rebecca Black singing, _Friday, Friday, gettin' down on Friday, everyone's lookin' forward to the weekend!_ "Are you fully rested?"

"Nah," Tony lies. The problem with sleeping for more than eight hours is that he is just as groggy when he wakes up than if he slept his usual five. Tony has never been able to find a happy medium, but that's probably due to the fact that he couldn't keep a regular sleep schedule if his life depended on it, rather than a happy medium not existing at all. "Besides, I get cranky if you let me sleep in. I just might be allergic to delta waves."

"You should expand that to all brain activity," Loki interjects. Tony glares at him; Thor knocks his shoulder into Loki's and kisses the dark fall of Loki's hair.

"Be kind, Loki," he says. Then, to Tony, "We did not wake you needlessly. You have a visitor."

"What now?" Tony asks, even as he kicks the fluffy mass of his comforter out of his direct line of vision. He's lost one of his socks sometime during the night and his bare toes curl when they meet cold air. "Who is—?"

Steve stands in the doorway, a sheepish smile on his face as he greets, "Morning, Tony."

Tony is instantly and electrically awake, jerking upwards so quickly he nearly brains himself on the ceiling. "Steve?" he croaks. "What are you doing here?"

"I thought I had a standing invitation?" Steve says, his teasing tone edging into uncertainty. "I'm sorry, I didn't know you were still asleep. I can come back later, if you would like?"

"No!" Tony squeaks, too fast and too sharp, like a dog toy that's been accidentally stepped on. He feels his cheeks heat up as he clears his throat and reopens his mouth to clarify. "I mean, no, it's okay, I'm awake. Obviously. I'm talking. Not that I don't talk in my sleep, because I do—not that I know, personally, but I've had people tell me that I do—and by people, I mean friend people, not _people_ people, and—yeah. Yeah. I'm awake."

Tony's entire face and neck are on fire. Loki has stopped trying to suppress his mirth, his head tucked into the crook of his elbow as his wave of laughter replaces Rebecca Black's one hit not-wonder. Tony wonders if he'll disappear if he dives headfirst over the side of his loft and into the Pit. Surely the black hole hidden in the Pit's depths will spit him out in a less fresh hell than the one he is living.

"Okay." Steve's broad shoulders shift beneath his white and blue letterman jacket, then shoves his hands in his coat pockets and straightens his spine. "I was headed over to HQ to grab a cup of coffee. Do you wanna come with me?"

_Or,_ Tony thinks, _I can tough it out in this universe._

"Sure," Tony says, as nonchalant as he can be when the quarterback he has a ridiculous crush on just invited him to get coffee. As far as his wildly skipping heart is concerned, Steve's innocent invitation is practically a marriage proposal. "I think I can do that."

Sending his thanks to the universe that he went to sleep still wearing his sweatpants—and completely ignoring the fact that Steve has already seen him in his boxers while being tragically hungover—Tony clambers out of the top bunk with more dexterity than he usually has in the mornings. He changes his socks and sweatshirt, shoves Thor's sherpa hat over his undoubtedly wild hair, and dons his scarf, coat, and boots in record time.

"Good to go!" Tony declares once he has his cellphone, wallet, and mittens. Purposefully, he keeps his back to a still snickering Loki and a silent Thor. Neither reaction bodes well, but Tony is focused on getting the hell out of Dodge, and all but pushes Steve out of his dorm room. "¡Vámanos, vámanos!" he commands. "¡Necesito café en este instante!"

Tony slams the door behind him; worrying about Thor and Loki is a problem for future!Tony to handle. Present!Tony has bigger problems to tackle, like how he's going to pretend to be a normal human being for an hour so he doesn't scare Steve away forever.

_Ha,_ Tony's brain belatedly quips as Steve falls in step with him, smiling gently as Tony tugs on his mittens to distract himself from how close Steve is. _Tackle. Get it?_

Without a doubt, this coffee date is going to be an utter disaster.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [【翻譯】最後的達陣 the last touchdown](https://archiveofourown.org/works/754550) by [ch890333](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ch890333/pseuds/ch890333)




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